Chapter 14 #5
I crossed my arms before he got close, because if I didn’t, I might do something stupid. Like look relieved. Or ask if he was okay. Or claw that girl’s handprint off his arm with my nails.
“Before you start,” he said.
“Oh, good. We’re opening with a warning.”
His jaw flexed. “That was Casey.”
I stared at him.
His ex.
That made sense.
Of course she looked like a beautiful car crash in lip gloss.
“Your ex,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“The one you said was on campus.”
“Yeah.”
“The one you needed fake dating protection from.”
“I did not phrase it like that.”
“You implied it.”
“I implied she’s a problem.”
I looked over the crowd where she had disappeared. “She seemed lovely.”
“She’s not.”
“Really? Because I was getting warm, emotionally balanced, respects boundaries.”
Drew exhaled hard, dragging one hand through his damp hair. For once, he didn’t smile.
That bothered me.
“She didn’t see you, did she?” he asked.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Casey. Did she see you?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
His eyes dropped to my leg. Then came back to mine.
“I didn’t want her coming after you.”
My stomach tightened.
“Coming after me how?”
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I don’t know. She’s unpredictable. I didn’t want her seeing you in my jersey and deciding to pull a Tonya Harding on your injured leg.”
I stared at him.
Then looked down at my leg.
Then back at him.
“That is the least romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“I’m not trying to be romantic. I’m telling you the girl is nuts.”
“What did you do to her?”
“Dated her.”
I waited.
He spread both hands like that explained everything. “What? Once you’ve had Travers in your bed, it’s hard to go back to anything else.”
I snorted before I could stop it.
Actually snorted.
“Really, Drew?”
His mouth twitched, and there he was again. Not fully. But enough.
“Fine.” He dropped the grin, though his eyes still had that flicker of arrogant trouble.
“Seriously? I was good to her. Probably too good. I stayed when I should’ve walked.
Answered calls I should’ve blocked. Let her make emergencies out of feelings because I thought being patient made me a good guy. ”
Something about that landed too softly.
Too honestly.
“So she can’t get over you because you were decent?” I asked.
“Because I didn’t know how to end things clean,” he said. “And because she doesn’t do closure. She does campaigns.”
I looked toward the crowd again.
Casey was gone, but the shape of her stayed in the air.
“Should I be worried?”
His face hardened instantly. “No.”
“Drew.”
“No,” he repeated, lower. “I’m worried. That’s different.”
That should not have done anything to me.
It did.
Before I could answer, someone bellowed from near the player buses.
“BONFIRE! BEACH! BUS LEAVES IN TEN! OR UBER, IF YOU’RE RICH AND BORING!”
Jace, obviously.
Another player shouted, “Travers! You coming or you playing husband all night?”
Drew did not look away from me.
“Beach party,” he said. “After home wins, the team does a bonfire thing.”
“Of course you do.”
“You game?”
I lifted a brow. “I have an injured hamstring and am wearing your jersey like a public relations casualty.”
“So yes?”
“I’m not cleared to play yet,” I said, pretending to consider it. “Might as well watch other people make bad choices.”
His grin came back, slow and dangerous. “That’s my girl.”
Fake, I reminded myself.
My fake girl.
Fake.
The word was starting to sound less like a boundary and more like a prayer.
The beach was already half chaos by the time we got there.
Bonfires burned in wide iron rings dug into the sand.
Coolers sat open near driftwood tables. Someone had strung lights between two lifeguard posts, and music thumped low and bass-heavy beneath the crash of waves.
The football team had claimed the biggest fire, because apparently large men in matching sweats needed territorial seating.
Drew kept me close as we crossed the sand.
Not suffocating close.
Just close enough that his hand found the small of my back whenever the ground shifted under my bad leg.
Close enough that he slowed without making it obvious.
Close enough that when some girl yelled his name from near the coolers, he lifted two fingers in acknowledgment but did not move away from me.
I hated how much I noticed that.
I hated how much I liked it more.
By the time we reached the fire, half the team had already started in.
“Jersey girl!”
“Texas!”
“Travers finally domesticated?”
“Look at him carrying her bag. That’s sick, bro. Love has ruined you.”
Drew flipped them off without breaking stride.
“I’m getting a drink,” he said near my ear. “Want one?”
“Something light.”
“Beer?”
“Something that tastes less like frat basement.”
“High maintenance.”
“Correct.”
His mouth brushed the side of my head in a quick kiss that was probably for the people watching.
“Stay here. Don’t wander.”
I gave him a look.
He pointed at my leg. “For safety.”
“Say that again and I will use this beer as a weapon.”
“That’s my girl.”
Then he walked toward the keg line, leaving me near a circle of folding chairs and girls who looked at me with varying levels of interest, envy, and disappointment.
I had just lowered myself carefully into one of the chairs when the air changed.
Not around Drew.
Behind me.
I turned my head.
Tristan Vale stood twenty feet away near the edge of another fire, black hoodie zipped, one hand wrapped around a beer he didn’t seem to be drinking. Stella stood beside him in a cream sweater and jeans tucked into boots, dark hair falling loose over one shoulder, face turned toward the ocean.
They looked annoyingly beautiful together.
Not loud.
Not performative.
Just… inevitable.
Like the world had been written around them and the rest of us were lucky to get dialogue.
My stomach tightened.
I hated her.
That was not fair.
I knew that.
Stella had not stolen Tristan. He had never been mine to steal. She had not made him look at her like that. She had not forced him to choose her by simply existing with long legs and tragic eyes and whatever quiet spell she apparently had over half the athletic department.
Still.
I hated her.
Or I hated what she represented.
The chosen girl.
The one who made him stop hesitating.
The one who got the version of Tristan I had nearly broken myself trying to earn.
Stella looked over then.
Our eyes met.
Her expression shifted—not smug, not pitying. Concerned.
That somehow made it worse.
I gave her a look sharp enough to peel paint.
Her brows lifted slightly.
Then, to her credit, she did not look away.
Fine.
Volleyball queen had spine.
Good for her.
Across the sand, Drew was at the keg with Dante and Jace. Tristan must have seen him too, because his shoulders changed. Not much. Just enough. The way men did before becoming stupid.
Drew’s head turned.
He saw Vale.
The firelight caught his face at the exact moment the smile left it.
Oh, no.
No, no, no.
I pushed up from the chair too fast and pain sparked down the back of my leg. I grabbed the armrest, breathing through my teeth.
Lana would have told me to sit down.
My trainer would have tackled me.
Unfortunately, neither of them was there, and men were about to prove why women lived longer.
I started toward them.
Slowly.
Because sand plus my new brace plus rage was not a graceful combination.
I was halfway there when Tristan reached Drew first.
Or maybe Drew reached Tristan.
It didn’t matter.
They ended up near the keg table, faces close, bodies squared. Jace stopped mid-laugh. Dante’s hand went still on his cup. A couple basketball players noticed from the other side and started drifting closer like storms had their own gravitational pull.
I could not hear the first words.
Just saw Drew smile.
Bad sign.
Drew’s real smile was crooked and devastating.
This smile was flat.
Mean.
Tristan said something.
Drew’s jaw ticked.
Then beer went flying.
Not a lot. Just one red cup knocked hard enough that amber liquid splashed across the keg table and onto the sand.
Every conversation in a ten-foot radius faltered.
Drew shoved Tristan in the chest.
Hard.
Tristan stumbled one step back.
Then came forward with a fist already cocking.
“Tristan!” Stella’s voice cut through the noise.
Basketball boys grabbed him first—Kane from one side, another guy from the other, both catching his arms before he could swing clean.
Drew lunged anyway.
It took Jace, Dante, and three linemen to get hands on him.
Five men.
Five.
And Drew still moved them two feet through the sand like they were trying to hold back weather.
“Drew!” I shouted.
He either didn’t hear me or ignored me.
His eyes were locked on Tristan, wild and bright and furious in the firelight.
“You had your chance, Vale,” he snapped. “You fucked it up. Tristan strained against Kane’s arm across his chest, face dark. “What do you care about Isa’s love life now?” Drew snarled.
Vale laughed once, ugly and sharp. “What do I care? Were you going after her this whole time?”
The circle had gone almost silent.
My name sat in the air like a match.
Drew shoved against the hands holding him. “Funny question from a guy who was still looking at Stella every time Isa turned her back.”
Stella went very still.
I felt it even before I looked at her.
The words hit her like a physical thing.
Her face didn’t crumple. Girls like Stella didn’t do that in public. But something in her eyes cracked open for half a second before she shut it down.
Tristan saw it too.
His anger shifted.
Not gone.
Redirected.
He looked at her, and the whole beach seemed to hold its breath.
“Stella is the love of my life,” he said, voice low but clear. “That doesn’t mean I don’t care what happens to Isa.”
Oh.
Okay.
There it was—the cleanest, cruelest truth of the whole ugly mess.
I did not want him anymore.
Not the way I had.
But hearing it still felt like stepping barefoot onto glass.
Stella looked away first.
Drew’s face twisted.